The International Journal of Cooperative Law (IJCL), issued by Ius Cooperativum (an international community of cooperative lawyers), is the first ever academic, peer reviewed, online, open access journal explicitly focused on cooperative law.
Its first issue was published in July 2018 and it is available here.
The focus of the IJCL is cooperative law, broadly defined all those legal rules – laws, administrative acts, court decisions, jurisprudence, cooperative bylaws/statutes or any other source of law – which regulate the structure and/or the operations of cooperatives as enterprises in the economic sense and as institutions in the legal sense, including provisions from other areas of law, applied to cooperatives (such as tax law, labor law, competition law). Its purpose is to stimulate the development of an international thinking in cooperative law and to include cooperative law into the major academic debates about the future of business law or the regulation of enterprises. IJCL publishes articles, reviews, case studies, case-law commentaries, empirical research pieces or book reviews for a wider audience on topics related to national, regional or international cooperative law, including global and comparative perspectives. The IJCL has no geographical limitation nor one by legal traditions; quite the contrary, it seeks to cover cooperative law worldwide. Contributions through the lens of law per se will be complemented with other approaches, such as the approaches of law and economics, political and social sciences. The IJCL is mainly addressed to legal scholars and academics, without excluding practitioners and professionals with an interest in the field however.
Authors that are interested in contributing to the IJCL’s second issue – to be published before June 2019 – are invited to submit their work at [email protected]before the 31st of January 2019.
Exceptionally, contributions that have been previously published elsewhere and are of major interest for cooperative law may also be considered for publication, under the condition that there will be no copyrights’ infringements.
LANGUAGE
The language of the journal is English. Nevertheless, contributions may also be submitted in French, German or Spanish. However, if accepted, the author will be invited to translate the manuscript into English.
LENGTH
There are no minimum or maximum requirements with regard to the length of the submitted manuscript
PROCESS
The contributions will be subject to an anonymous peer-reviewing process, during which the article will be evaluated and a decision will be made for the article’s acceptance, revision or rejection.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Structure of contribution:
At the first page, please write down the title of your contribution, your surname, first name and affiliation. Please also include an abstract. The references shall be at the end of the contribution.
File to be send:
Please send your contribution in “Word Document” format at the e-mail [email protected] (email subject: “Submission for the second issue of IJCL”). The name of the file shall be the following “SURNAME, FIRST NAME – TITLE OF CONTRIBUTION”.
The 1st issue of the International Journal of Cooperative Law is out! You can read it in your browser by clicking the title below or download a copy using the Download button.
Short Course on “Cooperative law for sustainable development” (7.8.-23.8.2018, University of Helsinki): the deadline for application submission is due on the 31th of July, 2018. For more information please visit http://www.helsinkisummerschool.fi/courses/course/cooperative-law-for-sustainable-development/
15:00- 16:30 Round Table between economists and lawyers, the motto being: “What can we/what must we learn from each other”?
16:30 – Acropolis Museum Visit
17:00-19:00 Workshop for students and lawyers: Introduction to cooperatives and cooperative law – Collaboration with European Law Students’ Association – Henrÿ Hagen, Kassavetis Demosthenis
Thursday, 28 of September 2018
10:00 10:30 Registration
10:30 -12:00 Cooperative law and the legal framework of the social economy
Chair: Geormas Konstantinos
Kalimeri Eleni, Barkas Ioannis, The legal framework of the Social Solidarity Economy in Greece
Melissourgos Georgios, Salasidou Panagiota, Meddling with the chaos: Which Greek legal forms may hold the status of Bodies of Social Solidarity Economy?
Tryfona Ioanna, Keranis Giorgos, Recommendations on the framework of Worker Buyouts of failing or bankrupt companies within the context of Social and Solidarity Economy organizations
12:00: 12:15 Break 1
12:15- 14:15 The legal relevance of the cooperative principles for other fields of law
Chair: Nikolaou Kostas
Vouroutzis Zisis, The liability of the governing bodies of agricultural cooperatives in relation to the provisions of the environmental legislation
17: 15 – 18: 45 Legal requirements for specific types of cooperatives by governance/structure (e.g. workers’ cooperatives, multi-stakeholder cooperatives, social cooperatives)
Chair: Meira Deolinda
Koupidis Sotiris, Buying social: Social cooperatives and public procurement
12:00- 13:10 Cooperative law and human rights
Chair: Tsironas Thanasis
Hiez David, Voluntary membership: up to which point do cooperatives support liberalism?
Filippou Dionysis, The Greek constitutional provisions on cooperatives
Tsironas Thanasis, The formation of compulsory cooperative by law and the principle of proportionality
João Telmo Oliveira Filho, The right of cooperativism as a fundamental right: The constitutional principles and normative guidelines of Brazilian cooperativism as elements for the characterization of the fundamental right to cooperativism
13:10- 14:00 Break 2
14:00- 15:30 Cooperative law and globalization.
Chair: Tziva Efi
Anthopoulou Theodosia, Kavoulakos Karolos, The importance of distance learning programs for the development of SSE
Henrÿ Hagen, The summer school on “Cooperative law for sustainable development” and the cooperative network studies, Ruralia Institute, Helsinki University
Ius Cooperativum: International Journal of Cooperative Law- World Map of cooperative lawyers
17: 45-18:00 Break 4
18:00- 18: 45 Conclusions- Henrÿ Hagen
18: 45- Dinner
2ND INTERNATIONAL FORUM ON COOPERATIVE LAW- CALL FOR PAPERS
The 2nd International Forum on Cooperative Law follows the one organized in 2016 at Montevideo, Uruguay. The fruitful outcome of the Montevideo Forum – both as concerns the number of participants and the positive feed-back – led to the decision to organize such meetings biannually.
The 2nd International Forum on Cooperative Law will be organized at Athens by Ius Cooperativum, with the support of the International Co-operative Alliance and of two local co-organizers: the Hellenic Open University (Athens) and the Peoples’ University on Social and Solidarity Economy (Thessaloniki).
Aim
Under the overall theme of “Cooperative Law and Cooperative Principles”, which is to point to the relevance of the internationally recognized cooperative principles for cooperative law, the 2nd International Forum on Cooperative Law will focus on the place of the cooperative principles in cooperative law, the research and education in the field of cooperative law, and on an exchange of views on cooperatives by lawyers and economists.
The themes of the Forum might include:
The legal relevance (if any) of the cooperative principles for cooperative law
The legal relevance (if any) of the cooperative principles for other fields of law (e.g. constitutions, administration law, tax law, bankruptcy law, labor law, competition law, bankruptcy law, audit regulations, book-keeping and accounting standards)
Legal requirements (if any) for specific types of cooperatives, either by sector (e.g. agricultural, banking, energy cooperatives), or by governance/structure (e.g. workers’ cooperatives, multi-stakeholder cooperatives, social cooperatives)
The unification of cooperative law at national, regional and international levels
Cooperative law and the legal framework of the social economy
Cooperative law and globalization.
Policies on research and education in the field of cooperative law
Educational programs in the field of cooperative law
Tools for the research and study of cooperative law.
It is also planned to have a dialogue on any of the above or related themes between economists and lawyers, the motto being: “What can we/what must we learn from each other”?
Call for expression of interest
To express your interest in attending, please send an email to Ifigeneia Douvitsa (at: [email protected]) no later than the end of July.
If you would like to speak at the event, you are kindly invited to submit an abstract of 500-800 words to Ifigeneia Douvitsa (at: [email protected]), indicating one of the above-mentioned themes, to which it relates, no later than the end of July.
The full papers should be submitted no later than 28th August 2018 and may be considered for publication for the 2nd issue of the International Journal of Cooperative Law.
We wish to remind you that the deadline for the submission of contributions for the first issue of the International Journal of Cooperative Law expires on the 31st of August. For more information please visit https://iuscooperativum.org/call-for-papers/
The need to know about and understand cooperative law, coupled with the absence of an academic international journal of cooperative law, gave birth to the idea of creating the:
“International Journal of Cooperative Law (IJCL)”
The focus of the journal is cooperative law, broadly defined as all those legal rules which regulate the structure and/or the operations of cooperatives as enterprises in the economic sense and as institutions in the legal sense, including provisions from other areas of law, applied to cooperatives.
The journal’s establishment and development aspires to contribute to fill the knowledge and research gap, while constituting the venue to establish cooperative legal theory in the discipline of law. To promote its goals, the IJCL will be an open access, online journal and its issues will be published at www.iuscooperativum.org in order to reach the highest possible number of readers.
Authors that are interested in contributing to the IJCL’s first issue – to be published at the end of 2017 – are invited to submit their work at [email protected] before the 31th of August.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
TYPES OF CONTRIBUTIONS
The editors will consider articles, book reviews, event reports, commentaries on court cases and contributions on legislation that are of significance for a wider audience on topics related to national, regional or international cooperative law, including global and comparative perspectives.
The editors are also interested in publishing manuscripts on labor law, tax law, competition law and other areas of law that have an impact on the cooperatives’ structure and operation.
Contributions that have been previously published elsewhere in other forms or/and languages may also be submitted at the IJCL, under the condition that there will be no copyrights’ infringements.
LANGUAGE
The official language of the journal is English. Nevertheless, the abstract – apart from English- may be in French, German or Spanish. The rest of the manuscript does not have to be necessarily in English but, if accepted, the author is kindly invited to translate the manuscript into the IJCL’s official language.
LENGTH
There are no specific minimum or maximum requirements with regard to the length of the submitted manuscript
REFERENCE STYLE
Please use the following example for your manuscript’s citations:
JORGE, J., ALBARRÁN,, C. & SALINAS, F. (2013): “La Economía Social ante el nuevo paradigma de Bienestar social”, CIRIEC-España. Revista de Economía Pública, Social y Cooperativa, 79, 5-34.
PROCESS
The contributions will be subject to an anonymous peer-reviewing process, during which the article will be evaluated and a decision will be made for the article’s acceptance, revision or rejection.
Kindest regards,
The editors
Ifigeneia Douvitsa, Cynthia Giagnocavo, Hagen Henrÿ , David Hiez, Ian Snaith
UAAM-VVOV, Lieve Lowet, partner at ICODA European Affairs and AMICE, are jointly sponsoring and promoting The European Mutual Insurance Award, which aims to encourage research and analysis in the field of mutual insurance legislation in Europe.
Montevideo, 16th-18th of November 2016: cooperative law highlighted
by David Hiez and Ifigeneia Douvitsa
Several events interesting cooperative law took place in Montevideo (Uruguay), and more particularly the first international forum on Co-operative law (conference of the Law Committee of the ICA). The main event was the IVth Co-operative Summit of the Americas. In the meantime, IInd Continental Congress on Co-operative Law was scheduled, as well as the international forum.
First surprise for a European man or woman: we were not less than 140 attenders and a quick survey by show of hands indicated that most of them were lawyers. Moreover, profile were diverse: Professors, young researchers, councils, employees of cooperatives, civil servants, and all coming from different countries of Latin America, Canada, Israel and Europe. Nearly everybody attended or made a presentation to all the sessions, both of the Latin America Congress and of the International Forum. The number of young law researchers and lawyers was very promising for the development of cooperative law.
The concomitance of both events was very fruitful for two reasons. First, with regard to organization, this allowed to mutualize efforts and to profit from the presence of LatinAmerican lawyers, far more numerous. Concerning funding, there was few mutualization but a high generosity from ICA America and CUDECOOP (the Uruguayan co-operative confederation), who provided freely for the premises, the interpretation Spanish-English-English-Spanish during all three days, and offered low fees for enrollment. Such arrangements are often the outcome of personal relationships, and the friendship of Hagen Henry (Chair of the Law Committee of the ICA) and Dante Cracogna (Chair of the regional Law Committee of ICA America) is the basis of that success. The Europeans in Montevideo have had the dream that European cooperatives could share that attention for research.
The second benefit from the collaboration was intellectual. Instead of having two successive or parallel events, one American and one worldwide, the diverse sessions were mixed or joint. The outcome was very fruitful: the opportunity for everyone to learn more about research on LatinAmerican and international cooperative law, and the possibility to debate. The whole has been very stimulating, but also very friendly.
At large, eight sessions were scheduled: three for the LatinAmerican congress (the cooperative act, the regulation of financial and banking cooperatives, and the control of cooperatives), two for the international forum (cooperative law and cooperative principles, and cooperative law and economy), and three joint plenary sessions (cooperatives in constitutional law, cooperative taxation, and labor cooperatives).
However, we will focus on several points. The keynote speaker for the opening of the conference has been Hagen Henry, the best comparatist of cooperative law since many years. He spoke about cooperative law for the 21st century, and developed the major questions of present cooperative law. One of the most exotic session for a European lawyer was about « acto cooperativo » that we simply translate in cooperative act. Inspired by Spanish law, cooperative act has been developed in LatinAmerican doctrine in the 60s, gained case law and legislation, and is nowadays a pillar of cooperative law.
In our understanding, the cooperative act is the act which qualifies the relationship between the cooperative and each cooperator. It seems to be nearly exactly the opposite of the double quality principle developed in Europe. Indeed, instead of presenting two different qualities, two relationships, (as a shareholder and as a user of the cooperative’s services), the cooperative act provides for a synthesis of these two sides of the coin. The cooperator is not schizophrenic, he/she is a member for whom the political involvement and the use of cooperative’s services are the outcomes of a single quality: membership. This concept may be an answer to the problems created by the notion of double quality. Indeed, the double quality principle allows the attraction of the use relationship by a separate contract, which is itself attracted by the various contracts of traditional typology: labor contract, loan, sell…
The second interesting topic of the conference has been the control of cooperatives, considered as mix of cooperative auditing and state control. It seems that the use of cooperatives by public policies was present in all the minds, and made people reluctant to any state intervention. The situation differs from a state to another, the state is sometimes still the auditor itself. The hostility against the situation is so high that some lawyers contest the principle of external auditing itself, considering that the legitimate control must be made by members. However, most speakers defended auditing, at least with the condition that it is finally, even if indirectly, under the responsibility of the cooperative.
We may as well note a major focus on cooperative banks, and a unanimous critics addressed to the uniformity of regulation for capitalist and cooperative banks. The critic is sometimes completed by the contestation of the application for developing countries of regulation established with consideration to northern countries.
About non LatinAmerican lawyers, far less numerous, most of their presentations have been, directly or indirectly, centered on cooperative principles and their connection with cooperative law, notably through constitutional provisions, in a comparative perspective. Aside, another topic has been the relationships between cooperative law and competition law or tax law. In the detail however, the contributions were disparate, because of the various culture of the speakers. This is also the fruitfulness of such events, but it shows that the community of cooperative lawyers will profit from a stronger structuration.
Apart from the communications, two major concrete initiatives have been presented, aimed at the creation of technical tools to facilitate research in cooperative law. In one hand, ICA prepares a database of cooperative legislations. This project is ongoing, with International LaborOrganization and FAO as partners, and the possible support of the World Bank. Its structure and functionality remain vague (notably its updating), but very promising. A beta version will be online soon, with 40 countries integrated. In a medium run, it should be more than a static database, and would stimulate debates.
In the other hand, five European cooperative lawyers launched Iuscooperativum (http://www.iuscooperativum.org), a website to facilitate cooperation and dissemination of news, ideas, and stimulate debates among cooperative lawyers. This website will offer a map to provide with the contact of cooperative lawyer in the highest number of countries. The website will also contain information on case law or legislation changes, conferences, book reports… The Iuscooperativum is also planning to launch an international journal of cooperative law, to give a voice and facilitate the development of cooperative law worldwide. The website is new, initiated by academic without any institutional support, and rely only on your participation to develop.
To sum up our feeling after these three days in Montevideo, we have been impressed by the number of lawyers attending, with attention, and by the variety of the covered topics. That diversity derives from the multiple understanding of what is cooperative law, lato sensu, in connection with the traditional branches of law. The event has been closed by Hagen Henry and a closing conference of Dante Cracogna to synthesize the discussions. They both echoed the opinions expressed during the conference that such events should be organized more regularly. Would that wish be heared by european cooperatives?
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